The Scholastic Method in I.

33 John Jordan

One of the complaints people have about I.33 is the lack of organization. It appears to jump around and this makes studying the document difficult. I propose that I.33 uses the Scholastic Method to organize itself and instruct the student. In doing so the document rises above being a simple catalog of techniques and becomes a tool which provides the student with the fundamentals needed to continue in the study of armed and unarmored combat. This is not a new idea, nor is it entirely mine. I had never heard of the Scholastic Method. And I while I knew a very little about mnemonic techniques I had no idea they were so highly developed in the Middle Ages. But in 2005 the Rocky Mountain Historical Combat Guild hosted a weekend seminar on Fiore in Ft. Collins, Colorado. The seminar was taught by Mr. Bob Charron and, as usual with Bob's seminars, it was a weekend of mental fireworks. Really great stuff. Among the things he brought up was the Medieval Craft of Memory and the Scholastic Method. The former deals with techniques which aid in the retention of information. The latter deals with THE instructional method commonly used in the Middle Ages (and up until the 19th Century). The Scholastic Method may be an extension of the monastic practice of reading a passage and then meditating on it, or a variation of the sermons used in church services. Or perhaps it's the other way round. In any event the Scholastic Method works as follows. The first stage is the lecture. During the lecture a passage or a complete work is read aloud to the audience. No questions are allowed during this time. The lecture is followed by the meditation. During the meditation the audience tries to understand the lecture. Questions are formulated, but not asked, during this stage. Now we come to the third stage: the questioning. Now questions are asked and answers are sought. The final stage is the disputation. During the disputation, different answers are compared and contrasted and tested to see which answer is best. Some amongst you may recognize the Hegelian Dialectic in action. The final stage is the most important stage, but let's come back to that. First let's look at the organization of I.33 in the light of the Scholastic Method. Consider the first play of I.33. It looks like this: In this image, the scholar (red) in 1, advances, in Half-Shield, against the cleric (blue), in 1st Ward (Underarm). Question: Why? What is the scholar trying to do? This question is answered 22 pages into the manuscript. In 2 we see the cleric 'falling beneath the sword and shield' of the scholar. Question: Why? He'd be better off if his point was higher with a simple block/parry. What's he trying to do? Again, this question is answered later in the manuscript. In 3 the text tells us that the cleric has the initiative, but in 4 we see the scholar winning the fight. Why? There are a lot of questions raised by the visual images in the first instructional sequence and even more raised by the text that accompanies the images. What we find, I believe, is that the answers either occur later in the manuscript or it is expected that the student will arrive at their own answer. Let's look at the first option and come back to the second later. Many of the questions raised by looking at the 1st instructional sequence are answered later in the manuscript.

Using the visual images, and some of the text, we can create an expanded image of the 1st instructional sequence that looks like this: In the top left of this image we see position 1 of the instructional sequence, on the middle right we see 2, and on the bottom right we see 3. I don't show 4. I'll get back to that. In the new image we see the scholar approach the cleric. In the figure on the middle left we see what he's trying to do. He hits the cleric in the face if the cleric doesn't do something. But the cleric does do something, which we see in the middle image on the right. And in the bottom image on the left we see that the cleric will follow this parry with a thrust to the scholar's face. The scholar prevents this by taking the cleric's blade off the centerline as seen in the bottom right image. So, many of our questions have been answered by the manuscript. But only by reading the manuscript all the way through (usually multiple times) with questions in mind can we find these answers. This is the Scholastic Method in action. And it's incredibly irritating to modern students who have been conditioned to expect instructional material to present a clear summary and/or to build from simple actions to complex actions. The advantage to the Scholastic Method is that it allows the student to go beyond the material presented. A summary is static, the Scholastic Method is a process. Why doesn't my second image encompass the 4th step of the 1st instructional sequence? Because from the position depicted in the 3rd step the scholar (red) has three options (four if you include doing nothing at all as an option) and the cleric (blue) has at least seven options.

You end up with something complex that looks like this:

My best flowchart here:

known study is my which you can see

The value of these studies is not the end product, but the process that produced the end product. In order to produce my summaries I had to study the manuscript. When I finally started to get a handle on the Scholastic Method I began to feel a bit guilty about sharing my studies. They were simple summaries and allowed people to bypass the Method. And the Method is important. Because, unlike a summary, it forces the student to think. And the student will come up with answers that the instructor may never have known or considered. The student can, in fact, surpass the instructor. *THAT* is the true value of the Scholastic Method. I mentioned doing studies. In seeking answers to questions (which foot is forward in the 1st Ward, for example) I studied other manuscripts and applied analysis techniques I had used in I.33 to those manuscripts. So, for example when I looked at Talhoffer's sword and buckler (1467) I came up with things like this:

And I began to incorporate things I learned from those studies into my personal body of knowledge. I wasn't just finding answers to I.33, I was adding new material. Now, my body of knowledge regarding sword and buckler combat includes I.33, but not all of it because I can't yet make some of it work. But it also includes material from Talhoffer and other sources. I've gone beyond what I.33 has to offer (while still exploring I.33 to find other things I haven't yet mastered). My interpretation of I.33 will always be slightly different from that of other students. And the authors of I.33 may have intended for this to be the case. Which was why my studies/summaries made me feel guilty; I was depriving people of the full benefits of the Scholastic Method. But then I realized that all my work contained mistakes. By telling people that, I forced them to find the mistakes, by studying the original material. And, voila, they were back into the Scholastic Method. Guilt gone. IF I.33 uses a rather sophisticated instructional technique and method of organization THEN WHY is the Latin text so grammatically poor? I'm not a Latin scholar but I'm assured it's pretty poor stuff. Which brings us back to the final phase of the scholastic method: disputation. In disputation answers are proposed, questioned, and tested. New answers arise and face the same challenges. And it's less important that we get the answers the author intended than it is that we use the process and get good answers. Let me give you an example. In I.33, the authors state that all men use the seven wards presented in the first two pages. But in the very first instructional sequence they show us an eighth position. Why? Why not just say that there are twenty two positions? The answer, I believe, is that the seven wards are a framework. They are a mnemonic construct. I can use those seven wards to categorize all the wards that are presented later in the manuscript. More importantly, I can use those seven wards to analyze wards that I.33 never talks about. Is this what the authors intended? I believe so, but I can never know. And, ultimately, IT DOESN'T MATTER. The technique works and that makes it valid. For me. Each student who studies I.33 will arrive at a slightly (or greatly) different interpretation. I believe that this is not only inevitable, but what the authors of I.33 were aiming for. So while we should study I.33 and try to understand it by duplicating it as closely as possible, we shouldn't be afraid to implement the knowledge we gain in our own style.